The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story

In a couple important respects, Syd Barrett is a difficult documentary subject, as there isn't much film of him either performing or being interviewed. The 50-minute film (originally broadcast on the BBC) that's the main feature of this DVD, however, does an excellent job of summarizing the key aspects of his life and music. Its most important strength is its interviews with his close associates, scoring the hard-to-believe coup of first-hand talks with all four of Barrett's Pink Floyd bandmates (Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Rick Wright, and David Gilmour). Making briefer but meaningful contributions are such interesting figures as Bob Klose, Pink Floyd's original guitarist; early Barrett girlfriend Libby Chisman; early Pink Floyd co-manager Peter Jenner; and Mike Leonard, who worked on the group's early lighting effects. Mixed with those interviews are small but significant snippets of '60s footage showing Barrett in performance with Pink Floyd, live and in the studio, as well as excerpts from home movies and the "Arnold Layne" promotional video; there's even a bit of the legendary unreleased Floyd/Barrett song "Vegetable Man" on the soundtrack. The brilliance of Barrett's music and the tragedy of his sudden and rapid mental demise are examined with intelligent and sympathetic detail, also encompassing his influence on the music that Pink Floyd went on to make without him. The two-DVD edition released in 2007 by Zeit Media is the one for serious Barrett/Pink Floyd fans to get, as it includes quite a bit of bonus material. Disc one has additional interview segments, a basic Barrett bio, and a memorabilia section that, unlike many such things on DVDs, is not an afterthought, but offers dozens of quite rare and interesting vintage posters, ads, record sleeves, and photos. The second disc offers complete unedited interview footage done for the project with Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason, as well as solo performances of Barrett songs by Graham Coxon of Blur and Robyn Hitchcock. The Waters-Gilmour-Wright-Mason interviews on disc two add up to 90 minutes in all, including almost an hour with Waters alone. While this might be more than general fans want to see and hear, for aficionados it's fascinating, affording the chance to hear the members' memories -- not only of Barrett, but of Floyd's early days in general -- at considerably greater length than the principal documentary feature allows. Those segments don't merely repeat obvious stuff that's been gone over many times elsewhere, digressing into such interesting tangents as Waters' recollections of Bob Klose's role in the early Pink Floyd, and Mason's accounts of the Barrett-Floyd outtakes "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Vegetable Man." ~ Richie Unterberger|